Photography Workshop: Ground Rules for Working Internationally as an Independent November 18, 2009

Photography workshop with Mark Brecke. Mark Brecke has worked around the world covering humanitarian issues. He is accustomed to working on the peripherals, without major support from the media or organizations. In this unique three hour workshop Mark will discuss how he has been able to successfully produce international projects working outside the system and on a shoestring budget. This workshop is perfect for photographers who are committed to issues, have a passion for photography and multimedia storytelling and who are trying to figure out how to get off the ground. 


Topics to be discussed include working on a minimal or nonexistent budget, how and what to research before leaving, working with NGOs, working in conflict zones without press or media behind you, establishing good relationships in the communities where you are working and working with multimedia.

BIOGRAPHY: Mark Brecke is a photographer and filmmaker whose work documents the stories of people victimized by war, ethnic conflict, and genocide. For more than 14 years and across three continents, he has covered some of the most troubled regions of the world, including Cambodia, Rwanda, Kosovo, Sudan, the West Bank, and Iraq.


His work has been exhibited internationally in a wide variety of venues. In September 2004, Mark started photographing the refugee camps of eastern Chad and traveled behind rebel lines in the Darfur region of Sudan with the Sudanese Liberation Army. For the past five years, he has traveled around the United States lecturing and presenting his Darfur photographs to more than one hundred different audiences. 


In 2006, the U.S. Senate selected ten of Mark's Darfur photographs to be hung in the Russell Rotunda of the U.S. Senate Building in Washington, D.C. Mark has contributed his Darfur photographs to the U.S. Holocaust Museum/Google Earth’s interactive map about the Darfur crisis, to the book Not on Our Watch (co authored by Don Cheadle and John Prendergast), and to the international multi media exhibit DarfurDarfur currently touring museums and galleries. 


In October of 2007, Mark premiered his new film on the Darfur crisis, They Turned Our Desert Into Fire, at the 31st Sao Paulo International Film Festival in Brazil. The film won the International Jury Prize for Best Documentary, and is being broadcast worldwide on TV and the festival circuit.